Several years ago I got a full-body CT scan. It found a spot on my liver that was “statistically unlikely” to be anything serious. It also found something else that was just a typical anomaly and told me my coronary arteries were in great shape for my age. I don’t recall what else it found but it wasn’t something that changed my life. A few years earlier a relative got a full-body CT scan because of pain in his side that his doctor wasn’t taking seriously. It found kidney stones. Someone else I know got his & her body scans. What all these scans have in common was they were all direct-to-consumer, with no input from their doctors. They were also all paid for in cash.
Category: News and Events
Tuesday Links
- MLK fact of the day: black men are more likely to graduate from college than go to prison. In 2009, it was the other way around.
- Workers at 22 federal agencies plan a walk out today to protest Biden’s policies affecting Gaza.
- Last year Congress failed to reauthorize key parts of “the single-most impactful US government program ever, saving 25 million lives over the past 20 years.”
- FAA (which regulates the airlines) has a DEI policy that emphasizes recruiting and hiring people with targeted disabilities, including “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”
- The University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine segregates and separates its first-year medical students based on their race, color and/or national origin. (WSJ)
- “Gas station heroin” peddled at convenience stores. (NYT)
Monday Links
- How political gridlock could kill the best global health program the US ever passed.
- The cost of Semaglutide, a medication used for treating type 2 diabetes and obesity, can range from $800 to $1,000 per month, on average. Since roughly 35% of Medicare patients are overweight or obese, Medicare spending is poised to go up by more than 17% overnight and stay at that level for a long time to come.
- The airlines lose 2 million bags a year.
- Fauci: no science behind the 6 ft distancing guideline.
- $5 trillion was spent on covid relief. The real increase in the federal debt was $5.8 trillion.
Is Your Doctor’s Advice Influenced by Money? Probably More Than You Realize
The Department of Health and Human Services, and many other federal agencies, love having experts to advise them. But are the experts always unbiased? Some are, while others are probably not. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is made up of 16 primary care experts, all volunteers who make recommendations about cost-effective preventive medical services and screenings….